But what's a "hipster?"
Oneida -- Happy New Year
It's probably too early for this nonsense, but I'm giving HNY official Best Album of 2006 status. I first heard Oneida via a cut from their Nice./Splittin' Peaches EP (2005) that I think I culled from Pitchfork's pay-for-play download section. That track was called "Inside My Head" and has since appeared on as many mix cd's as I could shoehorn it into. (Refrain: "I'll tell you 'bout living inside my head / It's all fucked up now living inside my head.") "Inside" is the kind of blissed-out damage I perenially find appealing -- the sort of driven fuzzy freakout I talked about a little in this post.
There's much to like about Oneida's sound, and they indulge a lot of different modes. Even on the afore-mentioned four-song EP they manage to hit four (or maybe three and a half) different sounds. The first track, "Summerland," caps its anxious folk primitivism with a great abstract sax explosion. Then "Inside." Then "Song Y;" which I now recognize exists in one of Oneida's main plays: computer funkery lead-in is joined by plucked acoustics and then gradually loops around itself until its interior tensions are exhausted. While all of that is going on we're treated to a nice falsetto soar of vocals, not unlike TV On The Radio's. There're key changes and other nice surprises, but it's the relentless staccato repetition that defines the song more so than anything else. Actually, this song probably wraps up a little early, as far as exhausting its tension goes. The last track, "Hakuna Matata," is more the kind of endurance rally that used to characterize Oneida's sound.
And by "used to" I'm mostly pointing towards the first two tracks on disc one of Each One Teach One (2002), which together constitute thirty minutes of throttled sonic assault, especially the first, slightly shorter one, "Sheets of Easter." I don't really know what Oneida's stance on religion is. They have a split EP with Liars called Athiests, Reconsider, but I don't know how exactly they mean that title. There certainly is an ecstatic quality to their music, though. Disc two of EOTO is more varied and uneven, though there are some standout tracks. The opening title track is a relatively relaxed groove accented with some nice beeps and boops. It sounds a little like older Flaming Lips mixed with, oh, say, Sonic Youth. "Number Nine" stretches back to some classic psyche-rock postures (sitar figures, swirling backwards vocals) but adds a fresh veneer of noise. Later on there's also the whimsical "Rugaru," which always gives me the mental image of a smallish, drunken man navigating (or trying to navigate) a bicycle through an urban market in southeast Asia.
There's an album apiece between Nice./Splittin' Peaches and both Each One Teach One and Happy New Year, both of which I will one day invest lucre towards; but it's not so hard to track their development with the evidence I have at hand and come to a judgement -- which is that Oneida have managed to stay very interesting experimentally while producing increasingly inviting songs. That they've primarily achieved this on HNY by embracing some folk signifiers shouldn't really be read as bandwagoning: their sticky-fingered approach has always been original and varied enough to allow them all the genre-morphing they could dream up. And besides, paying homage to the current fashions is just something all creatively successful bands are capable of. On the other hand, the now somewhat maligned term "freak-folk" could just as easily been coined to describe Oneida as it did Devendra Banhart, if not exactly in the same way.
Also, and to their credit, it's not like they just decided to folk it up for the entire album. True, lead track "Distress" does start with some stilted, melancholic Simon & Garfunkel harmonies laid over some fragile shakes of noise, but that track ultimately reads as a prologue to the album proper: "Happy New Year," track two, which jars awake with jittery computer squonks mixed with what I think is a steadily plinked synth of some sort. It's a refiguring of the mood of the first track into a more propulsive beat and hardy tone. Next is album highlight "The Adversary," which might be another obtuse religious reference (or not, though "The Adversary" is, I think, one of Lucifer's titles in some Christian myths). Some of the lyrics say things like "No adversary you" and "No adversary I," so maybe it's more of a retooled appropriation. It's also apparently a term in cryptography.
Up next is promo-ed mp3 "Up With People" which, along with the following "Pointing Fingers," hearkens back to Oneida's own past work, namely disc 2 of EOTO. I'm not so sure "Up With People" was the best way to promote this album since it's bereft of the touches of folk that crop up everywhere else, but it's a good song in and of itself and arguably has some of the folkiest lyrics of the album: "Sunlight shines on the top of the trees/the highest hills feel the sweetest breeze/you've got to get up to get free." But lyrics aren't really why I listen to Oneida; the kind of ecstatic confusion they want to create can't support much narrative, and with that out of the equation the lyrics' literal importance bows to instrumental import of the vocals, which mostly seem to exist to either reiterate or subtly twist the moods of the songs. It's true that a band like The Fiery Furnaces manages to incorporate a lot of narrative into some pretty confusing songs, but their whole musical tack seems wildly different than Oneida's, and besides, most of the Furnace's songs are literally about confusion, so they get a pass.
After "Pointing Fingers" ends (note: probable least favorite song on the album; also the one most reminiscent of TV On The Radio, though that's just a coincidence, really), the album gradually turns back towards the folky sounds laid down in the first three tracks. The hypnotic, insistent "History's Great Navigators" cuts the difference pretty evenly, though the next track, "Busy Little Bee" hits the Scarborough Fairgrounds running with a strummed mandolin announcing the start of a suite of tracks which indulges the lion's share of Happy New Year's folk experiments. "Reckoning" pits shimmery flute-synth washes and vocals against the album's most fronted acoustic figures; "You Can Never Tell" chants lovers' apocalyptic secrets; "The Misfit" rounds off the set with an international paranoia of latin rhythmns, spy-movie organ, and air travel unease.
Epilogue "Thank Your Parents" is the album's second longest cut (after "Up With People") and starts rather unassumingly with four bars of trap to which are gradually added a piano, the vocals, and then a very subtle drone organ figure that eventually dominates the soundscape. It's a great closer because it gathers up as much of the album's various forms as possible before sending them off on a wave both lulling and, somehow, triumphant -- which is a good a way to describe Oneida's disparate and conflicted sound as any I've read.
An underlying (but important) reason that I've so fallen for Happy New Year is the excitement of discovering Oneida. It's entirely possible that I wouldn't be enamored of it if I hadn't also been so blown away by "Sheets of Easter," or charmed by "Rugaru." This is my justification for having gone through each of the cd's that I own for this post, which seems kinda excessive and is indeed the reason it's taken so long to write. Another reason is having listened to Grizzly Bear's Yellow House and Happy New Year back to back and, after hearing a ton of hype about Grizzly Bear, thinking that Oneida obviously had a better album that worked in much the same vein. This isn't any beef with Grizzly Bear, but thinking that an album you really like is being overlooked tends to stoke some passion (or it happens to me, at least). For the record, Happy New Year came out months before Yellow House.
It's probably too early for this nonsense, but I'm giving HNY official Best Album of 2006 status. I first heard Oneida via a cut from their Nice./Splittin' Peaches EP (2005) that I think I culled from Pitchfork's pay-for-play download section. That track was called "Inside My Head" and has since appeared on as many mix cd's as I could shoehorn it into. (Refrain: "I'll tell you 'bout living inside my head / It's all fucked up now living inside my head.") "Inside" is the kind of blissed-out damage I perenially find appealing -- the sort of driven fuzzy freakout I talked about a little in this post.
There's much to like about Oneida's sound, and they indulge a lot of different modes. Even on the afore-mentioned four-song EP they manage to hit four (or maybe three and a half) different sounds. The first track, "Summerland," caps its anxious folk primitivism with a great abstract sax explosion. Then "Inside." Then "Song Y;" which I now recognize exists in one of Oneida's main plays: computer funkery lead-in is joined by plucked acoustics and then gradually loops around itself until its interior tensions are exhausted. While all of that is going on we're treated to a nice falsetto soar of vocals, not unlike TV On The Radio's. There're key changes and other nice surprises, but it's the relentless staccato repetition that defines the song more so than anything else. Actually, this song probably wraps up a little early, as far as exhausting its tension goes. The last track, "Hakuna Matata," is more the kind of endurance rally that used to characterize Oneida's sound.
And by "used to" I'm mostly pointing towards the first two tracks on disc one of Each One Teach One (2002), which together constitute thirty minutes of throttled sonic assault, especially the first, slightly shorter one, "Sheets of Easter." I don't really know what Oneida's stance on religion is. They have a split EP with Liars called Athiests, Reconsider, but I don't know how exactly they mean that title. There certainly is an ecstatic quality to their music, though. Disc two of EOTO is more varied and uneven, though there are some standout tracks. The opening title track is a relatively relaxed groove accented with some nice beeps and boops. It sounds a little like older Flaming Lips mixed with, oh, say, Sonic Youth. "Number Nine" stretches back to some classic psyche-rock postures (sitar figures, swirling backwards vocals) but adds a fresh veneer of noise. Later on there's also the whimsical "Rugaru," which always gives me the mental image of a smallish, drunken man navigating (or trying to navigate) a bicycle through an urban market in southeast Asia.
There's an album apiece between Nice./Splittin' Peaches and both Each One Teach One and Happy New Year, both of which I will one day invest lucre towards; but it's not so hard to track their development with the evidence I have at hand and come to a judgement -- which is that Oneida have managed to stay very interesting experimentally while producing increasingly inviting songs. That they've primarily achieved this on HNY by embracing some folk signifiers shouldn't really be read as bandwagoning: their sticky-fingered approach has always been original and varied enough to allow them all the genre-morphing they could dream up. And besides, paying homage to the current fashions is just something all creatively successful bands are capable of. On the other hand, the now somewhat maligned term "freak-folk" could just as easily been coined to describe Oneida as it did Devendra Banhart, if not exactly in the same way.
Also, and to their credit, it's not like they just decided to folk it up for the entire album. True, lead track "Distress" does start with some stilted, melancholic Simon & Garfunkel harmonies laid over some fragile shakes of noise, but that track ultimately reads as a prologue to the album proper: "Happy New Year," track two, which jars awake with jittery computer squonks mixed with what I think is a steadily plinked synth of some sort. It's a refiguring of the mood of the first track into a more propulsive beat and hardy tone. Next is album highlight "The Adversary," which might be another obtuse religious reference (or not, though "The Adversary" is, I think, one of Lucifer's titles in some Christian myths). Some of the lyrics say things like "No adversary you" and "No adversary I," so maybe it's more of a retooled appropriation. It's also apparently a term in cryptography.
Up next is promo-ed mp3 "Up With People" which, along with the following "Pointing Fingers," hearkens back to Oneida's own past work, namely disc 2 of EOTO. I'm not so sure "Up With People" was the best way to promote this album since it's bereft of the touches of folk that crop up everywhere else, but it's a good song in and of itself and arguably has some of the folkiest lyrics of the album: "Sunlight shines on the top of the trees/the highest hills feel the sweetest breeze/you've got to get up to get free." But lyrics aren't really why I listen to Oneida; the kind of ecstatic confusion they want to create can't support much narrative, and with that out of the equation the lyrics' literal importance bows to instrumental import of the vocals, which mostly seem to exist to either reiterate or subtly twist the moods of the songs. It's true that a band like The Fiery Furnaces manages to incorporate a lot of narrative into some pretty confusing songs, but their whole musical tack seems wildly different than Oneida's, and besides, most of the Furnace's songs are literally about confusion, so they get a pass.
After "Pointing Fingers" ends (note: probable least favorite song on the album; also the one most reminiscent of TV On The Radio, though that's just a coincidence, really), the album gradually turns back towards the folky sounds laid down in the first three tracks. The hypnotic, insistent "History's Great Navigators" cuts the difference pretty evenly, though the next track, "Busy Little Bee" hits the Scarborough Fairgrounds running with a strummed mandolin announcing the start of a suite of tracks which indulges the lion's share of Happy New Year's folk experiments. "Reckoning" pits shimmery flute-synth washes and vocals against the album's most fronted acoustic figures; "You Can Never Tell" chants lovers' apocalyptic secrets; "The Misfit" rounds off the set with an international paranoia of latin rhythmns, spy-movie organ, and air travel unease.
Epilogue "Thank Your Parents" is the album's second longest cut (after "Up With People") and starts rather unassumingly with four bars of trap to which are gradually added a piano, the vocals, and then a very subtle drone organ figure that eventually dominates the soundscape. It's a great closer because it gathers up as much of the album's various forms as possible before sending them off on a wave both lulling and, somehow, triumphant -- which is a good a way to describe Oneida's disparate and conflicted sound as any I've read.
An underlying (but important) reason that I've so fallen for Happy New Year is the excitement of discovering Oneida. It's entirely possible that I wouldn't be enamored of it if I hadn't also been so blown away by "Sheets of Easter," or charmed by "Rugaru." This is my justification for having gone through each of the cd's that I own for this post, which seems kinda excessive and is indeed the reason it's taken so long to write. Another reason is having listened to Grizzly Bear's Yellow House and Happy New Year back to back and, after hearing a ton of hype about Grizzly Bear, thinking that Oneida obviously had a better album that worked in much the same vein. This isn't any beef with Grizzly Bear, but thinking that an album you really like is being overlooked tends to stoke some passion (or it happens to me, at least). For the record, Happy New Year came out months before Yellow House.
posted by PearJack at 7:14 AM
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